Main Menu

Lomography Smartphone Film Scanner: Turning Analog Film Digital

Even though smartphones are capable of taking lomography photos with the help of third-party apps, there are still people who prefer to use the actual lomography camera. Since lomography camera still uses analog film to capture and store the images taken, some enthusiasts will develop their own photographs, while others take it to the one-hour photo lab.

Recently, with the success of their Kickstarter project, Lomography has released a scanner which allows you to scan your film and store it in your smartphone.

Dubbed the Lomography Smartphone Film Scanner, it works with any 35 mm film. With the camera app on, just place your smartphone on the scanner. When you turn on the scanner, a light source shines through from under the film. The light will help you to view the negative images.

There’s also a roller to help you roll between frames easily, so you can go through a full roll of film easily and quickly. Once you get the negatives you can colorize it with a software like Photoshop or you can develop it into photographs with an app.

There is a suggested app which can help turn your scanned negatives into positives: the Lomoscanner App (for Android & iOS). The Lomoscanner app also allows one to stitch negatives together to create a panaroma picture or share the scanned photos with your friends with a click of a button. However, it is still currently under development.

To look at the type of output you can get from this, here are some examples of negatives which were scanned using Smartphone Film Scanner. For even more examples, check here.

The Lomography Smartphone Film Scanner is available at the Lomography webshop for $69. It uses 2 AA batteries to power and weighs 244 g. It’s light weight and easy to manage, making it a fun tool to play with among lomography lovers.

For the rest of us, if you find any old 35 mm film lying around, you can use this to recapture all your childhood memories and turn them digital.